EDITORIAL
Thanksgiving Day with Jesus and Matthew
Jesus enjoyed a good meal. That fact
probably infuriates people who believe perfect faith means unrelenting
asceticism and self-denial.
It is not surprising that the concept of enjoying oneself,
throwing oneself into all of life, is a little alien in a nation of believers
whose spiritual forerunners are, after all, Puritans.
Jesus, if we’re reading things correctly, would begrudge no
one a fine Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends. Good food, young
children showing every color of the emotional rainbow in the course of three or
four hours, old-timers wondering where the years went and savoring each second
despite the din; some people toiling away in the kitchen, willingly for the
most part, muttering and wiping away steam for the rest of it. Every individual
can draw his or her own mental Thanksgiving picture from memories past -- or
imagined.
Then comes the question of giving thanks, given that’s what
the day is for. The thanks are not just a benediction on the past year.
For believers, thanks are invariably the start of something. For
believers who listen, the thanks have an action requirement attached.
Why spoil a good Thanksgiving dinner -- one that Jesus would
approve of -- with specters of the hungry, hollow-eyed children with stick
limbs foretold in this week’s cover story? Because part of the
Christian’s understanding of things is that we are all part of the human
family, that borders should not be divisions between those who have plenty and
those who starve.
You don’t have to spoil the meal, says Jesus, who enjoyed his
own share of feasts and celebrating.
Jesus, of course, was always confounding everyone. When the angry
liberals wanted him to be radical, he finished the bottle, wiped his chin and
said the equivalent of, “Lighten up.” When the triumphalists wanted
him to lead the parade into town, smite his enemies, proclaim victory, he spoke
of his failure, suffering and death. He scolded them for not getting it.
Though one might be hard put to draw a prescription from the
confounding Jesus, it is enough to say enjoy the meal to the full, provided
that, filled and refreshed, you do what is required. And don’t do it out
of guilt.
Jesus didn’t run on guilt, he operated from tenderness and
from a life whose everyday activities included the poor. And so must we.
For Christians who want to go deeper, the precursor to and the
aftermath of Thanksgiving Day is everything Matthew records Jesus talking about
between the Sermon on the Mount and the miracle of the loaves.
The Sermon on the Mount doesn’t start with the poor -- it
starts with those who are not poor, it starts with us: “Happy are the poor
in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” There’s a presumption in
that: Jesus knows he’s talking to people who know where their next meal is
coming from.
To be “poor in spirit” takes us beyond mere charity --
though charity is a valuable first step. Jesus requires, as subsequent Catholic
teaching emphasizes again and again, effort, exertion, action on behalf of and
with the poor.
As interpreted in Catholic social teaching, that action includes
working to change unjust systems.
Nor is Jesus offering these things as “amber alerts,” or
“editorial advisories,” or optional “how to’s.” We
don’t do these things to be Christian. The Jesus twist is, simply,
if we are Christian these things are the things we do.
The words recalled in our scriptures were spoken among people who
lived in a radical place, under pressure not to conform to the world, facing
persecution. And Jesus tells them that is where they should be, in the world
but not of it. They were the poor and the oppressed and they were
blessed, privileged, they believed, to be living in the always paradoxical
kingdom that turns every worldly value upside down.
We today are both burdened and blessed to know the community that
spreads beyond our neighborhood; we know the global neighborhood and its
condition.
The benefit is ours, of course. Working with and for the poor as
people “poor in spirit” -- as people in solidarity with the
poor and oppressed, to use a favorite John Paul II concept -- is where and how
we fulfill our side of the salvation bargain that Jesus gave his life to
seal.
The miracle of the loaves is about food, too, about an al fresco
feasting.
But its message at Thanksgiving isn’t the food message. Once
again, it’s about “spirit” as in “poor in spirit.”
In what “spirit” do we work with and for the poor?
Jesus saw thousands and fed them. We see millions and must feed
them. Work for and with and as one of the poor is an offering of our
tenderness.
Those are not hungry multitudes threatened with starvation (or in
other settings, oppression or neglect). Those are hungry one-at-a-time human
beings, to be seen and held close, to love, one at a time, as best we can.
What we give thanks for at Thanksgiving is the capacity to love.
The opportunity to love. And -- having given thanks -- for the opportunity to
act out of that love.
National Catholic Reporter, November 22,
2002
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